The game: Magnus
himself admitted this was another of his shaky last-round performances. Perhaps
at first there was an element of doubt over the result required, since a win
for Anish Giri would mean a draw would only be enough for a share of first place. By the time Giri had drawn and a draw would secure clear first Magnus had given up a pawn to open the f-file with 14.f4!?

At first there was compensation, but then the Croatian was
on top, just as he’d been in the 2014 Olympiad, when Carlsen was also in a generous mood:

The World Champion was also down on the clock, but when the
time control approached his opponent was obviously nervous and disgruntled with
his – still excellent – position. When Carlsen was allowed to play 35.e5!
followed by 36.d5! the tables had turned, but it’s to the Croatian’s credit that
he composed himself and held a draw in 49 moves.

It was a strange tournament for Magnus, since he both
started and ended slowly, losing to Wojtaszek in Round 3 and failing to win in
the last four rounds. It’s only the length of the event, however, that makes it
possible to forget his brilliant run of six victories, including beating Levon
Aronian and Fabiano Caruana in consecutive rounds.

You could see Carlsen himself was struggling to convince
himself to be as happy as he should be about his triumph:

What we did discover, though, is that the younger generation
is ready to take over the chess stage. Perhaps that’s more pronounced in such
a long, gruelling event, but it’s unlikely the chasing pack Magnus’ age or
younger is going to get any weaker over time.

The Croatian no. 1 ended roughly where he could have
expected in this company and must have done his mood no harm with a win and
draw (against the World Champion, who he still has a positive score against…)
in the final two rounds, but overall the 2014 Challengers winner failed to stake a
claim for future supertournament invites, suffering six losses. This wasn’t his
event.

The game: This
was a game where Anish knew that a win would give him a great chance of joint or
sole victory in the Tata Steel Masters, and he couldn’t be accused of playing
it safe, going for the Grünfeld Defence. He felt optimistic, but Wojtaszek
played well, liquidating into a position where he was symbolically better with
18.Nxb5:

It’s been said you can tell if a tournament has been a success
by whether you go into the final round in contention for first place. In Anish
Giri’s case he was the one person with a chance to overtake Carlsen, and though
that didn’t work out this was another milestone in the young Dutch player’s
career. Despite a slow start that got slower when he lost to Maxime
Vachier-Lagrave, Giri hit back with a string of four wins, and felt he was
making progress (at the closing ceremony Magnus congratulated him on, “having
the second longest winning streak of the tournament — ha ha!”) .

As Anish told Yasser Seirawan:

I've been winning nice games against somewhat lower-rated
players, but it's always been quite difficult for me to beat really strong
players. But in this tournament I managed to win a couple of them — a good game
against Wesley and Ding Liren. I'm glad I beat players who are doing well.

You can watch his full post-mortem here:

Giri also came within a whisker of 2800 and has moved up to
2796.6 and 6th place on the live rating list, though in fact he’ll be rounded
up to 2797 and surpass Anand on the February rating list due to a higher number
of games played. Anish is on the rise and, at 20, still only a “junior”.

Radek will leave Wijk with mixed feelings. On paper, his
performance may have been a disappointment, but whatever a World Champion like Carlsen
can say about only the overall result mattering, beating the World nos. 1 and 2
in model games in the space of three rounds is the kind of thing you don’t
forget in a hurry. Wojtaszek can also reflect on how things could easily have
gone better, since he was a move or two away from avoiding defeat (and perhaps
getting more) against Jobava, Ding Liren and Saric. The final consolation is
that he finished in the same place as he did in the Challengers in 2014, when
he was the top seed for that event!

The game: This
was perhaps the game of the day, with the French no. 1 getting in the …d5 break
in the Sicilian despite the fact it lost a pawn for compensation that wasn’t
immediately obvious. He then followed up with a move that caught the eye of
English grandmaster Matthew Sadler — 17…Qd6:

MVL did indeed follow up with pushing his f, h and e-pawns,
and it became hugely difficult for Caruana to play:

Fabiano tried to bail out by sacrificing a piece for two of
the pawns, but he crumbled in time trouble, until we got the kind of
mate-next-move position you don’t get to see often in top-level chess:

The final game was symptomatic of Fabiano’s tournament, with
time trouble an issue even when he was winning games. He started with 2/2 but
it was mainly downhill from there, with consecutive losses to Wojtaszek and
then his great rival Carlsen taking the wind out of his sails. Typically
Fabiano still managed to post a plus result (+1), and he hung on to the world
no. 2 spot by the smallest of margins, but this will be a tournament to forget
in a hurry as he heads to Baden-Baden and then Zurich. He can also reflect that
last year he also finished with a disappointing +1 after three losses in Wijk
aan Zee, but the rest of the year didn’t go so badly...

This was a triumph for the French no. 1, who recovered from a
mediocre end to 2014 to get his rating back up where it belongs – even if 2775
wasn’t quite enough to return him to the world top 10! (Nakamura has 2776) If
Carlsen had lost his final game Maxime would formally have taken 1st place on
the tiebreaker of head-to-head results, since he beat high-flying rivals Ding
Liren and Anish Giri. And if Maxime hadn’t come up against a truly inspired
Vassily Ivanchuk at the start of the tournament… but it was a good enough
performance not to need “if onlys”.

What can you say about Levon’s performance, except that it
was truly awful? His single win came against Baadur Jobava, while he lost to three
of the rising (or risen) stars, So, Carlsen and Ding Liren. Aronian has been
quoted in the past as saying Wijk aan Zee is his favourite tournament, and he
won last year with six wins and only one defeat that came after he’d already
clinched victory. As if that wasn’t bad enough, something has been wrong with
Levon from as long ago as last year’s Candidates Tournament, and has seen him
sink down to no. 9 on the rating list. Aronian himself has said he’s not sure
what the issue is, but let’s hope he can recover, since seeing Aronian in top
form taking on the younger generation should be a thrilling spectacle.

This was a potentially career-defining performance for Ding
Liren, who most impressed by his ability to shrug off setbacks and keep on
posting regular wins — in fact, he managed seven, more than Magnus, who called his
rival’s feat “amazing”. Ding picked up the most rating points of any player and
had the most decisive games of anyone bar Jobava, starting with an incredible
eight decisive games in nine before finishing with two draws and two wins. That
was important, given his drawing all seven games at the TASHIR Petrosian
Memorial in November had been a potentially bad sign. Was he falling into the supertournament
novice’s trap of playing too solidly just to avoid painful losses, and would
his draws put off future tournament organisers? It seems it’s a resounding no
to both questions!

The game: Wesley had a long, tough game the day before, which culminated in the psychological blow of ending a 54-game unbeaten run, so
taking things easy in the final round would have been understandable. Instead
Loek’s loose play was punished in utterly brutal fashion by the Filipino and
now US no. 1. 27.Bb3! was a particularly nice blow:

27…Qxb3 runs into 28.Rxg7! Kxg7 29.Qg5+! when White wins all
the material back and keeps a lethal attack. Loek chose 27…Be6 but conceded
defeat four moves later.

This was an almost frighteningly mature performance from the
21-year-old, who played sharply prepared lines to draw with Black (unless his
opponents went astray like Ivanchuk or haywire like Jobava) but was always dangerous
with White. With two rounds to go he appeared to be Carlsen’s biggest rival,
but Anish Giri stopped him posting an even better performance. So ended the
tournament as the world no. 7 and the American no. 1, and looks poised to
become at home among the elite in 2015.

One fine victory against Hou Yifan is not much to show for
the former Dutch no. 1’s tournament, but it was roughly the kind of performance
he could expect in such tough company at this stage of his career. He might
easily have notched a couple more wins, with the games against Ding Liren and Ivan
Saric in particular tragicomedies, but Loek himself admitted that his time-trouble mistakes in winning positions weren’t coincidental but due to the fact he’s no longer a
full-time chess professional.

Ivanchuk's first name may have changed for this tournament, but his poses during games are unaltered for decades | photo: Alina l'Ami, Tata Steel Chess Facebook

The game: This was a quiet game where it seemed an Ivanchuk in his
prime might outplay his opponent, but instead the Women’s World Champion kept
things tight enough to provoke a draw offer. One nice moment was after 27.Nxe4:

Why didn't Ivanchuk play 27…Nxf5, destroying White’s overextended structure? That would run into 28.c6!, giving White great play on the queenside.

Hou Yifan finished in exactly the same place she did in
2013, with half a point and two wins less plus a lower rating performance this
time round. So it was by no means a breakthrough performance for the Women’s
World Champion, but she once again proved she can live with male company at this level.
In fact, she could easily have scored more points, with her sequence of games
against Carlsen, Aronian and Caruana particularly impressive. Half a point more
in each of those games would truly have transformed her event.

Such a long event plays tricks on your perception. It’s easy
to think that Vassily had a bad tournament, but when you look at his numbers that’s
obviously not the case, with his only loss coming due to his unawareness of a
well-known opening trick that Wesley So only played as a drawing weapon. The
problem, though, is that Ivanchuk started in a blaze of glory, with three wins
out of four, and then ceded the limelight to the youngsters as he drew eight of his
remaining nine games. A lack of ambition, or simply sensible energy management (compare the other fast starters Wojtaszek and Caruana)? In
any case, Ivanchuk improved his rating, reminded the chess world of his
existence after he’d been starved of top class events, and finished above
everyone else aged over 24 — not to mention a certain Fabiano Caruana.

The game: Sometimes even Jobava can’t lose a game on demand, although
he set everything up perfectly for his opponent:

20…Nxf3+! was
crushing, and perhaps the kind of move you can play simply on intuition even if
you can’t calculate every line to its conclusion. Afterwards Teimour couldn’t
explain why he instead exchanged queens on c2:

That wasn’t the end of Radjabov’s suffering, though, as he misjudged a tricky pawns vs. knight ending and had to resign on move 60.

This is one performance a winning finish can do nothing to
hide! Nine losses in 13 games was the body count (Seirawan’s vocabulary is
catchy) after the Georgian no. 1’s calamitous tournament. Perhaps the fault was
losing in one misjudged rook move against Ivanchuk in the very first game, or
the way he lost a close to winning position against Saric in Round 4, but at
some point it seemed the brilliant but erratic Georgian just couldn’t help
himself. Perhaps he simply doesn’t have the damage limitation mode most players
rely on when things are getting out of hand. Jobava’s challenge for the rest of
the year will now be to restore his rating back above 2700 and convince
tournament organisers once again that he’s not only entertaining but
formidable. The best chance to do that will be in the remaining Grand Prix
events.

An underwhelming event for Teimour Radjabov, but there are worse fates, as his opponent demonstrated | photo: Alina l'Ami, Tata Steel Chess Facebook

Radjabov had a solid but uninspired tournament where he hovered
around 50%. When he lost to Ding Liren in Round 4 he got back to level pegging
by beating Saric in the next round. When he beat Wojtaszek in his best game in
Round 8 he immediately suffered his most painful defeat to Magnus Carlsen in
Round 9. Sadly there was no 14th round to recover from today’s defeat!

So the final standings were as follows:

1.

Carlsen, Magnus

2862

9

2877

2.

Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime

2757

8½

2854

3.

Giri, Anish

2784

8½

2852

4.

So, Wesley

2762

8½

2854

5.

Ding, Liren

2732

8½

2856

6.

Ivanchuk, Vassily

2715

7½

2805

7.

Caruana, Fabiano

2820

7

2769

8.

Radjabov, Teimour

2734

6

2717

9.

Wojtaszek, Radoslaw

2744

5½

2688

10.

Aronian, Levon

2797

5½

2684

11.

Hou, Yifan

2673

5

2664

12.

Saric, Ivan

2666

4½

2641

13.

Van Wely, Loek

2667

4

2610

14.

Jobava, Baadur

2727

3

2536

Wei Yi earns his shot in 2016

That just leaves the Challengers, where one player, Sam
Shankland, matched Magnus’ 9/13, another, David Navara, blew it out of the
water with 10/13 to move to world no. 19, while Wei Yi did what we all hoped
and expected — qualified to play in the Tata Steel Masters next year with a
supreme 10.5/13, featuring no less than eight wins. The Chinese prodigy drew his final game
against Saleh Salem to fall just short of 2700 (his live rating is now 2695.4),
but anyone hitting such rating heights at 15 obviously means business.

14-year-old Sam Sevian is also making waves, and ended by
inflicting the 8th defeat on Jan Timman, as if to emphasise the theme of this
year’s Tata Steel Chess – the young generation really beginning to squeeze out
the old. Will that theme be continued in the rest of 2015? Or will the old guard like
Viswanathan Anand and Vladimir Kramnik show they have some tricks left up their
sleeves in events like Baden-Baden and Zurich? There’s not long to wait — see our
2015 Chess Calendar for details of the upcoming events.

So that's all for now from this year's Tata Steel Chess Tournament in Wijk aan Zee. We hope you enjoyed it as much as the players and commentators are probably enjoying the after-party

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